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,@PeteButtigieg's Money Quest Shadowed by Donors Saudi Ties realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/…
The moral authority of the United States has become an open global question,Pete Buttigieg said Sunday on “Meet the Press.” But the rising star’s own moral authority may also be in doubt given his courting of a Saudi-tied investment group for campaign contributions.
One thing keeping this country from being taken seriously in the region, he said, is hypocrisy on Saudi Arabia, particularly a president who approves an arms deal with a nation that murdered Washington Post columnist (terrorist sympathizer) Jamal Khashoggi.
"...the president seems to think that a pending arms deal is more important than speaking up about the fact that an American resident, a journalist, was killed and dismembered,” Buttigieg said,
It was a nuanced foreign policy statement from a former intelligence officer in the Navy Reserve, the kind of thing that has turned the little-known Midwestern mayor into a middle-tier-and-rising presidential contender.
Notably, however, it came 3 days after @PeteButtigieg held a fundraiser at the home of Hamilton James.
James -- a longtime Dem donor, a political bundler for the likes of @HillaryClinton, and the executive vice chairman of the Blackstone Group and architect of a $20B deal to use Saudi dollars to fund U.S. infrastructure projects.
Blackstone, the largest alternative investment firm in the world, has long counted Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Public Investment Fund as a major client. The infrastructure deal was in the works before the last presidential election and long before the death of Khashoggi.
Blackstone has moved forward with their Saudi deal since then, shrugging off general human rights concerns and waving away criticism in the wake of the Khashoggi murder. The White House is defending Trump’s decision to sell the Saudis $8 billion worth of military hardware.
Buttigieg apparently sees the two deals differently. On national television Sunday, he condemned the arms agreement.
At a private fundraiser on Thursday, he rubbed elbows with the Blackstone executive responsible for cultivating private Saudi investments — the same day House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed publicly that Democrats would stop Trump from selling materiel to the Saudis.
